BLACKS IN POLITICS - THIS IS THE FIRST IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES OF STORIES ABOUT THE ROLE OF BLACK PEOPLE IN VOLUSIA COUNTY POLITICS.

If anyone had asked Hubert Grimes this time last year if he was planning to run for Volusia County judge, his answer would have been no. But after a successful campaign and less than two months on the bench, Grimes looks back and credits his decision to good timing.

''This kind of just happened. Everything was in order so I said, 'Why not?' '' recalled the 35-year-old Grimes. ''This community is ripe for young folks, black and white, to get involved. I hope I can encourage more blacks, and younger people in general.''

As the black most recently elected to a countywide post, Grimes joins a small but growing list of black politicians who are finding that the time is right to seek political office in Volusia County.

In Pierson, a town of about 1,800 people in northwest Volusia, Walter Thompkins has just started his second term as the town's first black mayor. In New Smyrna Beach, which is 18 percent black, Oretha Bell last March became the first black woman elected to the city commission.

''It seems that the public is realizing that we all have something to offer,'' says Bell, who won all seven precincts in the citywide election.

Until James Huger became the first black elected to the county council in 1973, few blacks won elective offices. But many played vital and varied roles in shaping politics in the county.

Joseph Hankerson was elected to the Daytona Beach City Council in 1898. And of the 26 men who voted to incorporate Daytona Beach in 1898, two were black - Thaddeus Gooden and John Tolliver.

''From the very birth of Daytona Beach we see blacks voting,'' says Leonard Lempel, a Bethune-Cookman College social science professor who is researching early black settlers of the area. ''I named them the founding fathers because they were the ones who voted to incorporate.''

Researchers and longtime residents agree that black voters have always had strong influence in the county and especially in Daytona Beach, now 37 percent black.

Recognizing that influence, white politicians turned to leaders in Daytona Beach's black community during the 1930s and 1940s to galvanize black voters and assure their own success on election day. Because that small group of black community leaders had enough power to virtually dictate how the community would vote, they in essence had the power to elect white politicians.

''They were the people who could lead the Negro vote. Whoever they supported was the man who was elected,'' says George Engram, a Daytona Beach resident since 1933. ''They held the power to keep the white men in office.''

One such leader was Joseph Harris, who wielded power from a perch in front of his Second Avenue pool hall.

One day before the city's 1935 mayoral election, Harris was kidnapped from that perch. His captors - trying to scare blacks away from the polls and defuse their voting strength - spread word in the community that Harris would be harmed if blacks voted. The scare tactic didn't work.

''Over 500 of us, in less than an hour, had our pistols and shotguns,'' said Jack Christian, a longtime community leader and city resident since 1925. ''We ran to every end of the road in automobiles and we combed the woods looking for him.''

Fearing widespread violence, local law authorities assured blacks that Harris was all right, Christian says. And as black voters flocked to the polls the next day to help re-elect Mayor Edward H. Armstrong over W.M. Hankins and Crawford Motley, Harris reappeared unharmed.

His kidnappers, described only as white men in a car, were never identified or captured.

Many say that in exchange for the constituency they built, people like Harris were rewarded with cash, influence among city officials and profits from illegal businesses.

''They knew that Harris knew everybody so they'd come to him and ask for his help and how much it would cost,'' says Christian, who ran a restaurant across the street from Harris.

''Wealthy and politically well-polished,'' Harris and a few other black leaders ''had the authority from Mayor Armstrong to appoint Negroes to different boards, and they got a cut from everyone who ran illegal numbers and moonshine,'' said Engram, who ran unsuccessfully for city council in 1948 and 1952. He is one of the city's first black electrical contractors.

Although the means and intentions of these political organizers were not always honorable, they still deserve credit for advancing blacks politically and economically, Engram and Christian say.

By gaining the ear of city officials and by getting jobs and appointments for blacks in exchange for votes, ''some of these men did more to uplift the Negro than a lot of others who you always hear about,'' said Engram.

''Blacks had more power voting then than they do now,'' said Christian. ''Because if anybody wanted to be elected without opposition, they camped out here in the black community.''

Blacks' voting power in Daytona Beach has been unmatched in most other Southern cities, says James Button, a University of Florida political scientist. But electing blacks to public office is more important than simply acknowledging their influence at the polls, he says.

''Having blacks in office has made the most difference in terms of black employment and opportunities in general,'' says Button, who has just completed a book on the civil rights movement in six Southern cities, including Daytona Beach.

Until the past 15 years, black candidates had little success, Button says, because ''whites voted for white candidates, blacks voted for blacks, and whites still outnumbered blacks in terms of voters.'' But ''blacks have been very successful since the 1970s.''